For The First Time Ever, Astronomers Pick Up Live 'Alien' Signal

A mysterious, "alien" space signal was detected as it occurred, an historic first, by astronomers in Eastern Australia. The breakthrough took place on May 15, 2014, but was only just recently reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The bursts, as astronomers are referring to them, emit the same amount of energy in a few milliseconds as the sun does in an entire day. They were identified within 10 seconds of occurring, Emily Petroff, a PhD student at Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology, told Fox News. "The importance of the discovery was recognized very quickly and we were all working very excitedly to contact other astronomers and telescopes around the world to look at the location of the burst," she explains.

Despite fervent efforts to reach other astronomers, new telescopes weren't able to point to the target until about eight hours after the Australian spotting, at which time, nothing else was seen.

But the burst didn't actually occur last year. "The light we're seeing from them is from a time when the universe was much younger," says Petroff. So whatever the source of the energy, it's been around for quite some time. Naturally, there has been much speculation over where these bursts are coming from, ranging from theories of a black hole to extraterrestrial life.

"The two most promising theories at the moment are that these bursts could be produced either by a star producing a highly energetic flare, or from a neutron star collapsing to make a black hole. Both of these things would be from sources in far-away galaxies just reaching us from billions of light years away," says Petroff.

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